One of the most dramatic U-turns by the apex court has gone largely unnoticed. It happened last week when a two-judge bench of Justice S N Variava and Justice H K Sema dismissed a PIL against the first-ever strike by High Court judges. This, when just two months ago Justice Variava’s bench was convinced about the need to pursue this PIL as ‘‘it addresses itself to a need to lay down guidelines pertaining to judicial propriety and is thus a matter of great public interest.’’ That PIL was filed on April 19, the very day 25 Punjab and Haryana High Court judges went on strike. And on December 3, it was dismissed as ‘‘infructuous.’’ The reason: the court apparently realised only then that the judges had resumed work within 24 hours. In its one-para order, the bench headed by Justice Variava said: ‘‘This Court had issued notice on 26th April, 2004 without noticing that by that time prayer (b) of the Writ Petition had become infructuous.’’ The prayer in question was for a direction to all the striking judges to resume their judicial work. The suggestion that the case hinged on the status of the strike—the judges returned to work on April 20—sharply contrasts with the activism displayed by the same bench in its four previous orders, particularly the one it issued on September 13. In that order, Variava’s bench gave an account of why it was proceeding with the PIL filed by advocate S S Dahiya even after a bench headed by Chief Justice of India R C Lahoti had on July 26 dismissed another petition filed by another advocate, Vikas Vashishth, pertaining to the same strike. Lahoti’s bench branded Vashishth’s petition as ‘‘publicity interest litigation’’ because it was ‘‘based entirely on newspaper reports’’ and ‘‘without any effort at verifying the facts by the petitioner personally.’’ On September 13, Variava’s bench said that the order passed by Lahoti’s bench ‘‘will not cover this case.’’ Reason: ‘‘Here the facts alleged are not based on newspaper reports but on personal knowledge.’’ So citing ‘‘great public interest,’’ Variava’s bench directed the Punjab and Haryana High Court to submit all papers related to the April 19 strike. By the next hearing on September 27, the High Court filed an affidavit laying bare the correspondence related to the mass casual leave taken by its judges. The bench then appointed senior advocate G L Sanghi as an Amicus Curiae in the matter. At around the same time, Justice Variava, as part of the Supreme Court collegium, recommended the transfer of the Punjab Chief Justice and two seniormost judges in connection with the strike. But on December 3, his bench reduced the case to the first two prayers made by the petitioner on the day of the strike. The first prayer simply said that the High Court should be directed to submit records pertaining to the case. Since the High Court subsequently filed the papers, the bench said that ‘‘prayer (a) stands worked out.’’ The second prayer was even more technical in nature. Since the judges had originally threatened to boycott the High Court for five days, the petitioner prayed in his petition filed on the first day of the strike that they should be immediately asked to resume their work. After passing orders on the petition from time to time over seven months, Variava’s bench suddenly ruled that the prayer for resumption of work had become ‘‘infructuous.’’ In fact, the term ‘‘infructuous’’ figures thrice in that six-line order of December 3. ‘‘Now the Writ Petition has become infructuous. The Writ Petition is accordingly dismissed as having become infructuous.’’
